Archive for March, 2013

When the religious are challenged to provide any objective evidence at all for their belief in god, it always ends the same way. After a few feeble tries, comes the final angry retort of, “Well, you can’t prove he doesn’t exist”. As if believing something on no evidence suddenly becomes a valid concept as long as no one can PROVE that it’s NOT true. Well nice try, but of course this is nonsense on it’s face. The fact that no one could disprove my claim that giant, undetectable green beetles are orbiting the Earth at this moment, and plan to attack at noon, pacific time, does not make the claim any more plausible.

Nothing in this life can be proven in absolute terms. No one goes around putting things into either a “proven” or an “unproven” box, because in fact, the proven box would remain perpetually empty. Even the best scientific theories, regardless of how completely and accurately they represent reality now, could be shown to be inaccurate somewhere down the road. The odds might be extraordinarily thin, but they are there none the less. This humility is at the heart of the scientific world view, as opposed to the arrogant certitude of the religious, who claim absolute knowledge of the answers to all of life’s most interesting questions.

Rather than proven or unproven, what we should be concerned with is what is reasonable or unreasonable, the same standards we use to imprison, and even execute, people for their crimes. It’s a simple concept. Reasonable things simply have on balance, more reasons to think they are true, than reasons to think they are false. Similarly, we call someone reasonable when they are willing and able to change their minds in the face of a severe imbalance of evidence, or unreasonable if they hold tight to a position even when faced with a mountain of evidence that they are wrong. Let’s see which of these is the religious position.

When religious people actually do respond to the question of what objective evidence they use to believe what they do, we usually get something like the following:

1. Well, the bible says it’s true
2. Well, it makes me feel better, so it must be true
3. My prayer was answered, when my dog got better. Yes I did take him to the vet, but nonetheless, I know it was the prayer that worked.
4. I can’t imagine how the universe was created, therefore it must have been poofed here by a super powerful magic man.

Now that might have sounded a bit harsh, but I really didn’t mean it that way. It’s simply an attempt at describing these answers in plain language, minus the fluff, the only purpose of which is to mask their inherent intellectual bankruptcy.

On the other hand, what objective reasons are there to think that god probably doesn’t exist? Well here are 20 items from a list that contained many more items, that I created some time ago.

1. The world is consistent with how it would be without a god, but requires countless machinations to explain why it would be the way it is with a perfect loving god
2. The postulation of god doesn’t help, because you then need to explain how god came to exist.
3. People are mostly born into their religion, which indicates they would have believed anything they were told as children.
4. God wants to communicate with us yet he just can’t seem to get the job done right, no matter how many times he tries.
5. The Bible itself is inconsistent with a perfect loving god, and contradicts itself frequently, and gives no information that was not known already when it was written
6. The overwhelming evidence for evolution, such as he fossil record, contradicts biblical creation.
7. The ultimate Carrot and stick of Heaven and Hell are about as obvious a gimmick of coercion as there could be, without actually telling people they are being conned. Believe me and live forever, or don’t and get eternal torture. Really? Not buying it?
8. Organic Chemicals are created continuously in nebulae light years from earth, and are easily created in the lab from elemental constituents and energy. (Building blocks of life are abundant, and easily created )
9. The postulation of supernatural explanations makes sense from a psychological perspective, in the vacuum of any real knowledge,which most of humanity has had to live until science. People want answers, and what answer is more obvious than a super powerful invisible sky daddy.
10. No amputee has ever regrown a limb through prayer, yet god supposedly intercedes in all manner of less and more severe circumstances. Prayer has been shown to be completely ineffective in scientific studies
11. Many mammals are capable of altruistic behavior and can show a form of compassion, and it is becoming clear that our “moral” behavior is evolutionary in nature. No god needed.
12. There have been millions of individual religions, with vastly different beliefs (Heavens Gate is just one interesting example…. Proof people can believe totally in any sort of nonsense)
13. With the decrease in belief and with the rise of science humans have progressed as never before. Either god does not exist, or he wants us to prosper the more that we deny his existence and use our own reason.
14. If success is due to a particular god how do we explain the success of nations that do not believe in that god, or no god at all. Countries like Japan and China. Or what of Europe’s many atheist nations such as Denmark and Sweden. They lead the world in the human development index AND in their number of atheists. Coincidence, or Is god rewarding them for not believing?
15. The idea of hell, To torture a person, in the worst way imaginable for all eternity is not consistent with a perfect loving god. It’s not even consistent with the most depraved human being imaginable.
16, The existence of evil and misery and viruses that can make babies bleed to death from every pore in their bodies. And I’m sorry but because a snake made eve eat an apple is not a sufficient reason.
17. Our Earth is but a tiny speck of dust in an immense universe. Why did god bother making all that other stuff. If we are so special, why such a tiny planet?
18. The simple silliness of it all. Jesus was sent by god to die for our sins, but Jesus is really god so he couldn’t die anyway, and the bread is the body of Christ and all animals in the world were on the ark and on and on and on. Not to mention the 72 virgins of Islam.
19. Hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and other natural disasters that have killed millions of completely innocent men women and children. Not to mention asteroids that have killed entire species, and could do the same to us. What kind of perfect creation is this?
20. If Earth is a special creation just for us, why is most of it totally uninhabitable. 3/4 ocean, much of it desert, the equator hot and humid and insect infested year round, the poles freezing most of the year. It has always been a case of struggling just to survive.

Now notice these are all objective observations that indicate god probably doesn’t exist. I just ask for a few of the same from the religious. If they can’t provide them, then they must admit that they are using blind faith for their beliefs, and that just perhaps, the word unreasonable might best describe the basis of their entire world view. And how can that possibly be a good thing for the rest of us?

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About Clear Blue Reason

Humans have only two ways of attempting to understand the world we live in. Either we can cobble together simple, satisfying stories and chain our minds to defending them against the conflicting onslaught of reality (Blind faith), or we can admit our ignorance, face our fears, and make an honest effort at understanding all the elements of our existence, so that we might discover ways of improving the human condition. The name Clear Blue Reason is meant to represent the contrast between a "clear blue" world view, based on reality and reason, that lets us see far and wide, and the muddy pool of confusion and contradiction that is the inevitable result of giving in to blind faith and self delusion.

Selected Quote

Praying is how we numb ourselves to the world, and yet call it compassion.
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